Indigenous land use occurring on temporal scales over centuries or millennia shapes forests in specific ways and influences the dynamics of forest ecosystems. It is challenging to study such land use, but analysis of “culturally modified trees” (CMTs) can give precise spatial and temporal information on past land use by indigenous people. The aim of this study was to increase our knowledge of indigenous use of land and resources in Nothofagus forests by identifying CMTs and analyzing the forest structure dynamics in an ancient Kawesqar settlement site in western Patagonia. Our results show that there are CMTs at Rio Batchelor and that the forest structure varies significantly within the site, indicating that Kawesqar people altered the forest by extracting various resources. We conclude that CMT studies have great potential in Nothofagus forests in southernmost America, but also face specific challenges due to environmental conditions and lack of corroborating historical information.

中文翻译：

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巴塔哥尼亚西部 Río Batchelor 的 Kawésqar 古定居点经过文化改造的树木和森林结构

几个世纪或数千年在时间尺度上发生的土著土地利用以特定方式塑造森林并影响森林生态系统的动态。研究此类土地利用具有挑战性，但对“文化改造树”(CMT) 的分析可以提供有关土著人民过去土地利用的精确时空信息。本研究的目的是通过识别 CMT 和分析巴塔哥尼亚西部一个古老的 Kawesqar 定居点的森林结构动态，增加我们对 Nothofagus 森林土地和资源土著使用的了解。我们的结果表明，Rio Batchelor 有 CMT，并且该站点内的森林结构变化很大，表明 Kawesqar 人通过提取各种资源改变了森林。